#i dunno if this is exactly what you awnted but i am REALLY tired

[daedalusdavinci]

ok im gonna answer this and then im gonna go to bed but my beloved @dubiousfruitsalad has requested one of those journal things and im going to try and deliver

Put “📓” or some other version of a book emoji into my inbox and I’ll explain the plot of a fanfiction that I haven’t written but daydream about.

you know for a while i actually wanted to write a sequel to tactical retreat (which, for those who dont know, is a medievalstuck dvekat fic where karkat is a knight and dave is a farmer who inspires him to leave his traumatic job and accept that his dream has changed over the years and tbh i think its still pretty well written i just reread it recently and i really had so many genius comedic moments w that fic tbh sollux is ICONIC but thats neither here nor there (read my fic))

in the first chapter i introduced a character named dave, nicknamed "crow", who was another knight who worked with karkat and frequently had guard duty watching over the prince, john. this was supposed to be davesprite and was a setup for a johndavesprite fic i was going to write after i finished tactical retreat, which was going to focus on a much more traditional knight/prince dynamic bc i am, unfortunately, such a sucker for that kind of thing. i think moreso than any other kid, john fits really well in the role of a prince striving to live up to his dads legacy but chafing uncomfortably under the role as someone who just loves pranks and screwing around. dave is, obviously, such a good knight character, and davesprite and john in particular have such a complicated and tragic relationship in canon where davesprite gave up his whole timeline and ruined his own life just to save john, without ever getting to meet his own john in person, and then for him to butt heads so hard with the john he saved, its just so. ugh. i feel a lot of ways about it. theyre perfect to me. i love a messy relationship

in this au crow/davesprite was going to be an immigrant from derse who immigrated when he was very young and had to work very hard to get his position in the knights, which is part of the reason why he and karkat get along so well, as they both come from similar backgrounds and similarly struggled to prove themselves. hes known john since they were relatively young as dadbert thought it was important for john to train alongside the knights, so theyre extremely close despite how often they drove each other crazy as kids. its very much a situation of john looking towards his future with creeping horror and leaning heavily on crow while he tries to balance his fathers expectations with his desire to cling to youth. on top of that, as they grow out of some of their younger immaturity and into themselves, theres a steadily growing attraction between them that theyre carefully and delicately trying to navigate when they both know johns position wont allow it.

ultimately, however, i ended up scrapping the whole thing as i got further and further into writing tactical retreat, so it never made it past an idea. the message of tactical retreat was so anti knights and blatantly used knights as an allegory for governmental force and police, and i just didnt feel good about writing a followup fic that glamorized knights the way the dvejohn fic wouldve required. i felt like it wouldve undermined what i worked so hard to convey. i still like the story idea, but it definitely doesnt have any place within the tactical retreat universe. however, you can absolutely still see the traces of that idea in the first chapter.

this is unfortunately far, far from the only time i have ever written a fic with the intention of writing a sequel that i never actually wrote. im just following the dopamine babey

#asks #tactical retreat #dubiousfruitsalad #i dunno if this is exactly what you awnted but i am REALLY tired #and im really struggling to remember any RECENT ideas